SIR,—I have not read Dr. Edith Sitwell's new slim :
volume of verse, nor any others of hers for that matter. But her obvious fury at any criticism, even by a competent critic, whom she belittles by implication and by personal abuse, hardly fits her for the gentle company of the " more than one great poet " which she so confidently appropriates to her- self.
Her heated and somewhat self-conscious defence against the plagiarism with which she was not charged might well cause John Donne to smile down from his secure niche a trifle quizzically at his irascible ' adapter.'
Whether tree sap looks like peridots or moth balls, there is certainly no poetry in venom and nothing of ethereal beauty in in- sufferable conceit. Her childish cable might well have been allowed the oblivion of being left to stew in the bitter juice of injured self- complacency in which it was spawned.—Yours faithfully,
G. E. HOWARD 8 Command Postal Depot, BAOR 40
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